Grocery Outlet coming to town

Cottage Grove’s selection of grocery stores will soon be greater by one.

On Friday, Melissa Porter, Vice President of Marketing for the Berkeley, California-based Grocery Outlet chain of stores, announced that the company has signed a lease to occupy the space in the Bi-Mart shopping center that previously housed Save-A-Lot.

“We’re very excited about it,” Porter said, though she added that “it’s still early in the process” for the store’s eventual move here and a lot of details must still be ironed out.

“Our construction people are still figuring out exactly what needs to be done at that location,” she said.

Porter did say Grocery Outlet is on a “very tight schedule of store openings” through the end of this year.

“We’re not sure where this one might fit in,” she said. “It won’t be this year; we’re looking at the first quarter of 2014.”

Grocery Outlet bills itself as a “deep discount store” that started in the 1940s when the late Jim Read began purchasing military surplus and selling it at huge discounts, according to the company’s website. The company has over 185 stores in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Pennsylvania, and each is independently operated. The company’s website states that it offers a wide variety of products — including groceries, frozen, deli and refrigerated, produce, fresh meat, general merchandise, seasonal products, housewares, toys and gifts at up to 50 percent off conventional retail prices. Grocery Outlet stores can already be found in Springfield, in Eugene on River Road and in Roseburg.